The bottom line is clear: Our vital interests in Afghanistan are limited and military victory is not the key to achieving them. On the contrary, waging a lengthy counterinsurgency war in Afghanistan may well do more to aid Taliban recruiting than to dismantle the group, help spread conflict further into Pakistan, unify radical groups that might otherwise be quarreling amongst themselves, threaten the long-term health of the U.S. economy, and prevent the U.S. government from turning its full attention to other pressing problems. -- Afghanistan Study Group

"The need for
emergency medical care has risen drastically," said Dr. Isabelle
Defourny, MSF director of operations. "We have teams working around the
clock treating men, women and children injured by bullets, blasts and
shells. Other life-threatening emergencies also need a rapid medical
response, such as for pregnant women in need of a C-section."

MSF
medical teams in a field trauma hospital, set up when the new push in
western Mosul began, have received more than 915 patients, according to
the statement. Of those, 763 suffered war-related trauma, 190 of whom
needed urgent lifesaving surgery.

More than half of the wounded were women or children under the age of 15, it said.

4
comments:

Nineveh (IraqiNews.com) There are 120 corpses of civilians waiting to be extracted from under debris of homes destroyed by battles in western Mosul, according to a local official.

Alsumaria News quoted Hossam al-Abbar, a member of the Nineveh province council, saying that there were 120 civilian corpses under the rubbles of some homes in Mosul al-Jadida, west of Mosul. “Those bodies need to be extracted by civil defense teams. The shortage in drilling and rescue tools delays the process,” Abbar stated.

He said those bodies have remained there since security forces began operations to retake the neighborhood, which ended successfully on March 13th with the total recapture of the district.

Abbar, who explained that the victims died in an airstrike, blamed Islamic State militants for civilian deaths, accusing them of using citizens as human shields.

Abbar was quoted Wednesday saying that 70 civilian corpses were extracted from both eastern and western Mosul over the past weeks. Anadolu Agency quoted a civil defense source on the same day saying ten bodies were pulled out from under debris in Mosul al-Jadida.

Dozens of civilians reportedly died since operations launched to retake Mosul in October. Drone strikes by Islamic State militants and airstrikes by Iraqi and U.S.-led coalition fighter jets occasionally shared the blame.

So far, battles between security troops and militants in Mosul displaced at least 355.000 since October, according to Iraqi government data. The number of refugees fleeing western Mosul alone stood recently at 181.000.

Cervantes, do you think the IqAF (Iraqi Air Force) has a sovereign right to provide close air support (CAS) to the ISF (Iraqi Security Forces)?

Do you think the GoI (Gov of Iraq) has the sovereign right to request close air support from allied countries for the ISF?

I still don't know what happened here, because there were many CAS strikes going on that day in Mosul by IqAF and many different coalition countries. It appears that an air strike on Daesh targets at an adjacent building "MAY" have set off explosions in the building in question.

One report I read claimed that the adjacent building air strike was requested by the ISF on the ground. This Iraqi request was confirmed by German surveillance aircraft and the building was struck by a Belgian aircraft. But I am not convinced that this particular air strike was the one adjacent to the building that blew up.

The GoI and ISF are claiming that Daesh did this intentionally, but that doesn't mean they are right.

I have also read reports that anywhere between 100 and 300 civilians died.